Liminal
by Isolde
Summary: Draco surrenders himself to Dumbledore to avoid being Marked, but Snape is more suspicious. Slash. Mainly SSDM. Warnings inside.
1. Chiaroscuro

Part of the SEVERUS SNAPE FUH-Q FEST @  
  
Challenge: It's only safe to meet in the magic space in-between.  
  
Warnings for non-consensual sex and incest (though neither graphically depicted).  
  
Implies spoilers up to Book IV - no OotP whatsoever.  
  
Beta: Go Seaward (with many thanks).  
  
Chiaroscuro  
  
"Liquorice Ripple"  
  
Severus Snape entered the Headmaster's office with his usual reluctance. Visiting Albus was always a difficult bargain with self-interest. The winter evening was fading through the windows. Fawkes rustled and resettled in the dappling light. To one side of the Headmaster's desk sat Draco Malfoy, his expression partly shadowed.  
  
Head of House business, then. Although he didn't relish any conversation with Lucius Malfoy about his son - despite evident intelligence the man persisted in believing that Snape could command attention and esteem for Draco solely based on his claims as the Malfoy heir - it was merely annoying, and not life threatening.  
  
"Headmaster," he said, glaring in anticipation at the boy who, somewhat disconcertingly, neither met his eyes nor avoided them. He just looked, as if at something no one else could see.  
  
"Severus," Snape noted the informal use of his name, highly unusual in front of a student, "please have a seat." He took the only other chair near the desk, across from Albus, which meant without an obvious effort he could only see the boy indirectly.  
  
The boy acknowledged him with a nod and a quiet, "Professor Snape." This was clearly not about the characteristic Malfoy arrogance, then. Severus had been rather too busy to focus on students who needed neither his attention nor his discipline. Perhaps he should have noticed how unusual it was for Draco not to be in both of those lists.  
  
"Draco," Dumbledore said with a gentleness that made Snape's stomach twist, because it could mean only dreadful things, "would you like to explain the situation, or shall I?"  
  
"I would rather you do it," the boy said immediately, not looking at Snape.  
  
The Headmaster paused, and Snape couldn't stop himself snapping "Merlin, Albus, just tell me."  
  
Dumbledore folded his hands on the table. "Draco has approached me for assistance because his father has arranged for him to take the Dark Mark at Christmas." Snape turned almost involuntarily to face the boy, who was now looking at him directly. But there was nothing to be read in those grey eyes in that moment.  
  
Snape consciously did not take a breath before he said, as coldly as he could and with a careful eye on the boy's reaction, "Mr Malfoy cannot seriously be suggesting that his father is a Death Eater." A slight movement of the hands, towards each other. He turned to the Headmaster. "This is doubtless some adolescent struggle for independence, into which the boy imagines we will be drawn if he makes outrageous accusations." There was nothing in Draco's demeanour to suggest he was about to either retract or fall apart.  
  
The Headmaster nodded his understanding. "Mr Malfoy has offered to take veritaserum."  
  
"What? Are you mad, Draco?"  
  
"He does not want to be handed over to the aurors for interrogation," the Headmaster continued.  
  
"I should think not."  
  
"And thus the only way we could administer the truth potion is to do so secretly. . ."  
  
"You cannot be serious. . ."  
  
"Thus leaving us, and particularly you Severus, open to Ministry charges."  
  
"A very convenient impasse. We cannot test the boy and yet he can insist we should believe him."  
  
"I thought perhaps there might be something else," Dumbledore suggested. Snape did not respond. "Something not on the restricted list that might help ascertain whether or not Draco's fears are genuine. Draco insists he is willing, even if the process is somewhat. . . experimental."  
  
After a silence, the Potions professor said, "I have no idea what you mean, Headmaster."  
  
"I am only asking that you give it some thought, Severus," the Headmaster said, reaching for his wand. "Perhaps we can have some tea while you do. Draco?"  
  
The boy shook his head mutely and when Dumbledore pressed a cup in his direction said only, "No thank you, Headmaster," in a quiet voice.  
  
"What are you playing at, Draco?" Snape muttered.  
  
Albus gave Snape a long and sombre look as he passed him a cup. "I believe, Professor, that Mr Malfoy is, how shall I put it. . . at a loss to explain."  
  
Snape breathed in. He felt the boy's eyes on him.  
  
"I have a very good memory, thank you, Albus," he said eventually. The cup rattled only slightly as he placed it on the desk as he stood.  
  
He looked down at the sixteen-year-old scion of the forces of dark wizardry, currently boring a hole in Dumbledore's desk with half-lidded eyes. "Very well. Bring him to my office," Snape glanced at the clock, which said only Time for Tea, "just before dawn."  
  
* * *  
  
Dark hair leant over bright hair, and the man's low voice whispered, "Are you sure you want to do this, Draco Malfoy?"  
  
"Yes." The boy's voice was soft and somewhat distant.  
  
Snape watched his eyes blink and open, his mouth open on a breath and close. "Very well." Snape placed both hands on the back of Draco's chair, just touching either side of his head. "What is your father's name?"  
  
"Lucius Malfoy."  
  
"How old is your mother?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
Snape waited while the boy shifted uncomfortably and nodded, "The potion also impels you to satisfy me with your answer. How old is your mother?"  
  
"Perhaps older than she seems, and there's no record." Draco relaxed somewhat as the impulsion let him go. "I've looked," he added.  
  
"What was the last school rule you broke?"  
  
The boy hesitated, and his mouth twisted. "I. . ."  
  
"You must co-operate now."  
  
"I helped kill Neville Longbottom's familiar," Draco said in one breath. "It was stupid."  
  
"The toad?"  
  
"We fed it to Mrs Norris."  
  
"It's been gone for more a year."  
  
"I've been good." Snape raised an eyebrow, but the boy seemed comfortable. "In terms of the rules."  
  
"What, then, have you done that we would not want you to do?"  
  
"I spy on you," Draco said softly. "For my father - for Lucius. On everyone, but mostly you."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"You know that. Because he wants to know everything that happens. Especially here."  
  
"And why on me in particular?"  
  
"Because I want to." The boy actually blushed, at which Snape pulled away from him. "Because you're the most fun to watch."  
  
"And are you working for your father now?"  
  
"No," there was a pause, in which a nauseated look crossed the boy's face and he bent his head as if concealing it, "but that doesn't mean he won't find a use for it. Whatever I do, I'm always working for him."  
  
Snape moved a chair to sit next to Draco. He tipped the white-blond head back so he could see the boy's face. The grey eyes were flat and his face wan and drawn. Not exactly beautiful now - Snape suppressed a wave of something uncomfortably close to satisfaction.  
  
"Is your father a Death Eater?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"How do you know?"  
  
"He has the mark; he brought Voldemort to our house," he breathed out audibly, "to meet me." Snape let go the boy's chin, and looked sharply up at Dumbledore, leaning back on the chaise lounge near the fire, stroking his beard. The older wizard didn't look up, but the firelight and the indirect light through the still open light-tunnel lit his face in complex shadows.  
  
"Do you want to become a Death Eater?" Draco shook his head, rocking slightly. "I need to hear you say it, Draco." The boy lurched forward as if in pain. "Stop fighting the magic."  
  
"I don't want to," the boy said weakly, "but I don't want to die."  
  
"Do you want to testify against Lucius, send him to Azkaban. . ."  
  
"No! I want to help you stop him, and save my father."  
  
Snape sat back. "Help us," he said flatly.  
  
Draco looked up, a gaunt face. "I know you're a spy," he said, almost conversationally. "That you have the mark and attend the meetings but report back to Dumbledore." Licking his lips, his eyes flicking away, he began to breathe heavily again.  
  
Snape pulled himself to his feet, looming over the pale curved boy. "This is a very dangerous game, Malfoy."  
  
"I know you're a spy, they don't know. I've seen you there, you never saw me." Draco threw his head back as if wracked by a sudden pain and fisted a hand in the side of Snape's robe. "I can help you, I want to."  
  
Snape pulled away abruptly, and the boy collapsed forward in the chair. He glanced at Dumbledore, still looking into the fire. Snape felt suddenly angry at that distance, at being forced to take this role. The Headmaster looked around at him sadly and Snape turned away. The boy seemed on the verge of crying, his legs drawn up against his chest in the chair.  
  
Snape thrust the waiting cup of water into Draco's hand, and he nodded something like thanks, or maybe defeat, and brought it shakily to his mouth. He sipped at it delicately, with quivering lips.  
  
"The potion in its present form accumulates the symptoms," Snape said calmly, but without looking back at the old man. "He will become progressively more ill until he passes out, but we can use spikes in the escalation to track a lie or even intent to conceal."  
  
"Do you feel well enough to continue, Draco?" Albus said from the lounge.  
  
"I'm not sure," his voice trailed off into a sharp inhalation, and the boy vomited copiously across his arm and the chair and Snape's robe.  
  
Snape merely looked up at the hourglass on the table. "The potion will have been absorbed. The answers are still reliable."  
  
"Don't we have enough?" the Headmaster asked. Snape despised the compassion there, which managed to be detached from guilt. Snape's hand on the knife and the cup, not his.  
  
Shaking his head Snape said stiffly, "Many of his answers have been open to interpretation."  
  
"We can at least clean the boy up, Severus." Dumbledore muttered a charm, not bothering with his wand, and produced a pillow for Draco's chair.  
  
Snape returned to his position leaning in over the huddled boy, who blinked under his shadow. He looked about twelve, his robe in disarray and his hair ruffled. The buttons on his formal sleeves were still undone where Snape had checked him for the mark, exposing a frail forearm on one side, and a naked blue-veined wrist on the other. The wound where he had drawn the boy's blood was still a livid dark line against the white skin.  
  
"Why don't you want to be a Death Eater, Draco?"  
  
"Him," the boy said in a soft voice that retained only an edge of the Malfoy drawl. "He disgusts me." Draco tilted his head back, as if it was a struggle to hold it upright. "And you," Snape stiffened at the slow smile shifting across the boy's upturned face, "I could never watch you die."  
  
* * * 


	2. Becoming 1

Becoming, part 1  
  
Professor Snape's room was no different than on any other day and yet everything seemed new - the dark corners darker, the comfortable spaces more welcoming, the unknown objects more mysterious, and Snape more hostile and yet more accessible.  
  
Closing his book, Snape gestured for Draco to take a seat opposite the desk.  
  
"I trust it's been made clear to you that you must follow my instructions precisely?"  
  
Draco nodded.  
  
"And that if I even suspect you of plotting against the Order you will be summarily sent to Azkaban, for which we have already made arrangements in case it becomes necessary?"  
  
"Yes, Professor."  
  
Snape's mouth set in a thin line. "I do not trust this course of action, Mr Malfoy, and I will not treat it with anything but suspicion. I would be a fool to do so."  
  
Draco looked at the Professor's cold expression - the eyes were not more interested, the body language as tightly closed as ever. "I understand, Professor."  
  
Drumming his fingers briefly on the desk, Snape overtly looked him over. "I doubt that very much," he said after a long minute.  
  
"Do you know what I would have said, Draco," he continued, "if you'd come to me with this plan?" The boy didn't reply, but he clearly wasn't expected to. "I would have told you to go back to your room and plot Quidditch manoeuvres with your friends."  
  
"Which is why I went to the Headmaster," Draco said evenly. At the Professor's deepening scowl, he added, "I know this is not a game."  
  
"Do you?"  
  
"I've had years to consider this - what I want, what is planned for me, how I can escape it, what it means to my family to do this or to do something else." And suddenly he felt both tired and angry with Snape's response. "Should I just line up for the branding iron and relinquish my soul without a struggle because some mad old wizard tells me to? Is that what you expected?"  
  
Snape leant up over the desk. "I would expect you not to walk into traps you aren't prepared for. If a few minutes of unsupportive questioning breaks your self-control, you have no hope of deceiving your father, and still less the 'mad old wizard'."  
  
"I've been deceiving Lucius for years, Professor, and I wager I know him even better than you do." Snape held his eye, but Draco fancied he might have been just a little impressed. "And as for Voldemort, I'm not underestimating him - that's what I'm here for you to teach me."  
  
Snape shot to his feet. He stalked over to the study area with a dark look of concentration. Draco watched him tap a hand impatiently on a shelf, draw out a book, and pace a brief circuit of the room, flipping through the pages.  
  
Draco waited. He watched. Snape glanced up at him twice, as if checking he was still there. After a long silence broken only by the ruffling of pages and the occasional sub-audible mutter, Snape strode back to the desk, and thudded the open book down in front of Draco.  
  
"You will let me cast Alio Clarescet on you."  
  
"All right."  
  
"What are you, a Gryffindor? Read it."  
  
About three paragraphs in Draco took in a breath, glanced up at Snape, and read on with his mouth open. He couldn't help saying, "You wouldn't, I mean, you wouldn't want to."  
  
"It will be cast on you, Mr Malfoy, not on us. Do finish the page before commenting."  
  
Draco did, closing the book silently, and running his hand over the carmine binding.  
  
"Well?" Snape said. "Shall I summon the Dementors?"  
  
"I don't really have a choice, do I?"  
  
"You made your choice, Malfoy. Now you have consequences."  
  
"Yes," Draco said, keeping his eyes on the book. "But it's only fair to say," he took a breath and looked up to meet Snape's still angry eyes, "I'm not sure you want to know what's in my head, Professor."  
  
* * *  
  
Their first five afternoons of training had passed in an exhausting and conflict-ridden blur.  
  
They began every session with a trying question and answer session, which wrung him and never satisfied Snape. Draco really did try to give the exhaustive and concise answers Snape was after, but it actually seemed impossible to please him. There were of course things Draco didn't want to say, and though he was only putting off the inevitable now. Still, the looming astrological crux for the casting of the complex telepathic spell did relieve him of the burden of deciding which if any of the things Draco didn't want to talk about were relevant to Snape's cause.  
  
In his head, it was Snape's cause.  
  
After the interrogation they moved on to mental training, at which Draco felt he already had quite a lot of experience, but none of it seemed to measure up to Snape's exacting standards. And they closed with physical training, where he knew he should surpass the older man, but where there was always some trap or skill that prevented him making the most of his more agile body and more rapid responses.  
  
In addition, Snape was continually angry. Everything Draco did infuriated Snape, and nothing he did was done well enough. He resented the imposition, and he seemed to despise Draco's skills as much as his inadequacies.  
  
Between that and the mounting suspicions of his housemates about where he went every afternoon and why he'd withdrawn from the Quidditch team and the duelling club, as the day drew nearer Draco found the prospect of being completely open to Snape's observation almost a relief. It didn't seem likely that he could be more hostile or demanding once he knew.  
  
He pulled off his invisibility cloak just inside his room. A light flared up at Zabini's quiet "Lumos." Draco closed his eyes and said "I'm going to bed, Blaise, turn it off."  
  
The light went out with an even quieter "Nox," and Draco removed his boots, remembering Snape's frustrated growl when he couldn't recall whether it was Nott or Macnair at Voldemort's side. He slipped off his outer robe and felt in the dark for the hook, remembering Snape's harsh dismissal of his inability to focus on a grounding crystal while Snape stood almost pressed against his back holding it before him. Feeling the warmth build in his groin he quickly unbuttoned his shirt and trousers, shaking them loose and tossing them towards his chest, recalling the dramatic extension of Snape's arms as he sent Draco flying across the room into a thinly cushioned wall yet again. His prick was heavy now - Snape's voice, Snape's body, Snape's presence - and he slid naked between the sheets instead of summoning a nightshirt, his hand sliding down, tangling through the hair and circling his prick softly.  
  
There was a weight on the bed, at which Draco didn't need to tense, although he should have heard him coming in the dark.  
  
"Blaise, not now," he said, turning away.  
  
"Draco," Blaise's voice puffed into his ear and across his neck, "it's been ages."  
  
"You sound like a desperate girlfriend."  
  
"Well," Blaise said, untroubled as always, "a little of the first part, and I can probably manage the second if you really want me to."  
  
Though he should have shaken him off, the smallest possibility blossomed in the corner of Draco's mind, and he couldn't stop himself turning towards Blaise's dark head.  
  
"Knew I could interest you," Blaise said, sliding off the bed and fumbling in the darkness - Draco didn't have to watch the barely visible figure to know what he was doing.  
  
"Blaise, piss off," he said, not very convincingly even to his own ear. "I'm tired."  
  
"I know," Blaise said, lifting the blanket and sliding inside, his naked thigh brushing down Draco's hip. "Off holed up with Snape, doing your new 'private tutoring' - no wonder you're all worn out."  
  
"Shut up, Zabini, you don't have a clue."  
  
"Hmm, bet he doesn't let you top though," Blaise smirked, running a warm hand across Draco's chest.  
  
He should push him away, but then who knew when he could next have enough privacy to. . . "Fuck off, Blaise."  
  
"Trying, dear," he replied. Draco hated endearments, everyone knew that, and Blaise laughed quietly when Draco thrust him hard back into the bed, looming over him. "See, I knew it, you're all frustrated."  
  
Blaise ran a hand along Draco's neck, down his torso and stroked gently at the base of his thickening penis. "Want to fuck me, Draco? Or shall I be Snape and do you?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Polyjuice in the second drawer."  
  
Draco wondered for a heady moment how many ethical trials one could be expected to undertake in a single week.  
  
* * * 


	3. Becoming 2

Becoming, part 2  
  
Draco made his way to the designated room exactly on time. He knew where he was right up to the final door, at the end of an upper corridor he knew he hadn't seen before. Only last year he'd had Astronomy in the room at the end of the last hall.  
  
Draco ran a finger along the dark red grain of the timber - it flowed there and swirled here. On the other side, everything would be different. They couldn't risk his father knowing about the spell, so it would be done in here, under some sort of protection guarded by Dumbledore himself. In effect, after this, he was someone who had left his parents' house. On the childhood side of the door, tracing the elaborate metalwork of a heavy latch, he extended all the moments in which someone could drag him back to his father's side: a Death Eater could hex him from that doorway; a disloyal Slytherin could bind him; or one of Lucius's flunkies could be sent.  
  
Would he go willingly?  
  
Draco smoothed his hand against the cool wood, searching for a dramatic gesture to mark the gap between this side and that side. He thought of his father's cool sharp eyes on him as he sent his Dark Arts tutor sprawling across the floor at the end of year Exhibition last Spring. Lucius never needed such unsubtle gestures as a smile of approval - Draco had felt his father's acceptance, known that his father would say his name today with the most delicately inflected endorsement.  
  
"Love you, Lucius," he breathed into the wood as he lifted the latch. At least he'd said it once.  
  
Severus watched him enter the room from the edge of the stairwell.  
  
* * *  
  
Dumbledore finally placed his wand upon the table. "The space is ready."  
  
He seemed to shrink and even fade into the background. McGonagall was beside him, supporting Dumbledore physically now as she had in the working of the spell.  
  
Snape took Draco's left hand and raised his wand. Without fanfare he said, "Alio clarescet."  
  
Snape's voice rolled over him, all fantasies and nightmares. Draco closed his eyes and listened to his blood roar in response, and then it was suddenly swept away under a wash of silence.  
  
For a moment Draco felt he was in a large open space, and the light through his eyelids seemed shifting and muted, but when he looked there was only dark torchlight in a cold tiled chamber. A rose and a snake entwined in the fresco on the wall writhed a little as his eyes passed over them.  
  
"If that is all, Headmaster?" Snape's voice came.  
  
"Really, Severus, see to the boy," McGonagall said.  
  
"He's not a boy any longer, Minerva."  
  
"He will be sixteen no matter what you do to him, Severus."  
  
"Now Minerva," Dumbledore said tiredly, "we know the boy freely chose."  
  
"Only Severus would choose such an archaic. . ."  
  
Draco tried to follow the conversation, tried to move with Snape as he turned away from the others, tried to remind himself what it meant that he was now following Snape, and that Snape would call him Draco, no longer Malfoy, the house he had left. His feet were planted firmly on the tiles, wound into and rooted amongst the tiles, which moved like the snake and the rose, shifting in a tide of silence.  
  
"Draco," Snape's voice running over his skin. "Can you walk?"  
  
"Do you even know what you've done?" - that's McGonagall.  
  
"He will recover soon enough."  
  
It will be soon enough, Draco thought; the snake looked up at him with rose red eyes.  
  
"Keep that look for your rash Gryffindors, Minerva. I did not want this, I do not want it now. I do it for all our sakes."  
  
For the sake of us all, Draco remembered, as the rose pulsed outwards, swallowing the snake and the room in a red flare.  
  
"Watch out, catch him!"  
  
* * *  
  
There was a field of dark green grass, Draco knew, under a red sky folded over with shifting dark clouds. He opened his eyes. He was alone. The clouds rushed westward chased by a black wind, but there were always more to follow.  
  
Draco lifted his hand to see the weight of the ring. His hand was pale and bright, almost opalescent. The thought drifted through his head. His robe of silver mesh slid down his arm, exposing his silver-white wrist and his smooth inner arm. No mark, he thought, just as the ridges of the mark emerged, rising out of his skin, silver ridges mapping the rose and the snake, throbbing as the voice said, "Draco?"  
  
* * *  
  
He was on a dark bed, there was candlelight some distance away, past the half-closed curtains.  
  
"You're awake," he heard Snape say.  
  
His eyes travelled over the dark quilt, the white sheets. He pulled himself upright and immediately pulled up the sleeve of his shirt to look at his arm.  
  
His robe was gone, he realised. Which meant, probably Snape had undressed him - or, at least, removed his robe and shoes. Snape took off my shoes, Draco thought in a slightly dazed way, and I slept through it.  
  
"It wasn't particularly exciting, I guarantee," Snape said as he moved into the gap between the curtains, pushing the curtains on one side back to the wall and placing a candle under a thick glass cover on the table beside the bed.  
  
Snape's dark hair fell over his pale candlelit face, and Draco realised they were alone in his bed. Dark eyes turned in his direction.  
  
"Let me make something clear, Mr Malfoy. . ."  
  
"I'm not." Snape looked down at him; Draco looked away. "Malfoy. I'm not any more. So don't call me that."  
  
"History has a way of sticking to you. . . Draco."  
  
Suddenly sleepy again, Draco dropped back to the bed, his head pillowed on one arm still looking up at the man looking down at him. The eyes, the mouth, the hands, he'd watched so many times. So much closer to him now, above him as he lay sprawled in Snape's bed.  
  
* * *  
  
When Draco awoke everything was exactly the same. He rolled in the sheets looking for light; he was alone again.  
  
Snape lived in the dungeons, of course, where there was no dawn, and his internal clock must be consistent and overbearing, like the rest of him really.  
  
"As you're awake now," Snape's voice came from somewhere outside the curtains, "you should come and eat."  
  
Draco slid out of bed in his shirt, and the world grew very dizzy - no red sky or grass this time, but grey and not at all pleasant.  
  
Snape's hand was under his arm, leading him back to the bed. "Red sky, Draco?"  
  
"You saw that?" Draco suddenly imagined Snape, lying with him in the grass sliding the silver mesh along his arms. Snape moved away and stood above him, looking down with some concern. He moved away and then returned with a glass.  
  
"Drink this." Draco did, without comment or question and Snape sat beside him, apparently rather more concerned. "Do you remember why we did this, Draco?"  
  
Some of the lightness was passing away and a headache seemed to be overtaking him. "For your protection, so you know what I'm doing." The realisation set in heavily, "so you know what I'm thinking."  
  
He turned his head away and Snape watched him for a moment. "It also resembles a complementarity spell in several respects - I will likely develop a little more of your physical health and you will perhaps find you can cast spells or recall potions you did not know; we will need to test out the limits and possibilities."  
  
Guess there'll be no more having sex with Blaise wearing your appearance then, Draco thought. Snape flinched beside him and got up to move away.  
  
"Yes I heard that and I am less than amused that you think me so gullible."  
  
Draco tried to send him the most explicit picture possible of Draco on his hands and knees, one fist dragging on his prick as Snape thrust into him from behind, smooth hands grasping Draco's hips to better fuck him at that pace.  
  
"When you've controlled yourself, there's breakfast," Snape's voice said from a distance.  
  
Draco smiled to himself. This might be fun, which was the last thing he'd expected.  
  
* * *  
  
The morning was filled with slight embarrassments and abortive attempts to not think things that of course he'd already thought so that he could attempt not to think them, but once he was out of the dungeons, Draco found Snape's awareness of his thoughts rather fascinating again. He tried to make a mental map of the range of the spell - certainly it encompassed the entire castle itself. Draco smiled into his Charms text. It might be one- sided, material testimony that the object of his intense attraction didn't trust him at all, but it was genuinely intimate and if it was strange and rather frightening, it was also in some ways what he'd wished for when he made this decision. He wondered what Snape thought of that thought.  
  
Potions was definitely the most promising, because he could watch Snape's responses. He started with how much he hated Potter, skirting well enough over the parts of that which were jealousy or rejection, he thought, and how he despised the fawning adulation of morons like Weasley and sycophants like Granger. He recalled a few choice moments of disconcerting and humiliating Potter and then, when the slight shift in Snape's shoulders seemed to signal him particularly amused, he moved on to Zabini's skills in bed. Snape shot him a glare, and although he more or less knew he'd pay for it later, there was absolutely nothing Snape could do about it right now.  
  
A smile curved across the Potion Master's face and the entire room drew in an anxious breath.  
  
"It occurs to me that Aelwuth's Healing is perhaps rather too much a repetition of last week's assignment. Instead, we will revise Polyjuice."  
  
A number of raised eyebrows were exchanged - they'd done this recently, and it was unlike Snape to make anything easy, but even Hermione wasn't about to question his lesson plan. Only Draco really hesitated as they removed last term's notebooks.  
  
"You'll prepare the formula as usual, and we'll test its quality with a secondary potion which has the interesting effect of revealing previous uses of Polyjuice - those of you considering Auror training will be required to make this on your entrance exam."  
  
It was also unlike Snape to give them anything interesting, and for different reasons, or at least with different attitudes to it, everyone was now sure Snape wanted to catch some misuse of Polyjuice. Hermione looked anxiously at Ron and Harry, who were silently asking each other the same questions. No, they didn't think it was them - how long ago would the potion be able to test anyway?  
  
Half the Slytherins were looking at Potter as well, with much more satisfaction, but Blaise tried desperately to catch Draco's eye. The blond boy's hand hovered over the open book, but instead of looking at Blaise he looked up to meet Snape's eyes.  
  
Don't make me do this, Draco thought urgently - you really don't want them to know.  
  
TBC 


	4. Becoming 3

Becoming, part 3  
  
As Draco entered Snape's rooms he tried to keep his mind blank, although Snape would know he was struggling not to think about something.  
  
"Sit down," Snape said abruptly. As Draco complied, Snape moved to his favourite chair, upholstered in a deep red cloth embroidered with similar coloured silks in a design of phoenixes in flight, as Draco had determined at the first opportunity. You couldn't tell from where he sat now, though, you had to. . .  
  
"Stop that," Snape said. When Draco looked at him, he added sharply, "Tell me."  
  
"The last person I imitated using Polyjuice was Voldemort." Draco couldn't help the scene flashing through his mind as he said it, and he held himself tensely, perhaps primed for flight, although at this point who knew where he could run to. Even if his father didn't know about the spell, and the silence from Malfoy Manor suggested he didn't, it still wasn't a safe place for him now.  
  
"I presume you're not stupid enough to embrace that fantasy yourself, so what idiot wanted to play your father in such a scene? Zabini's tastes don't run that way, I'm sure."  
  
Draco actually took a moment to get Snape's meaning, and as he felt only numb that was probably all that entered his mind. "You mean you think I let someone take my father's form and. . . No, Professor Snape, I really don't think so."  
  
"Then. . ." Draco was fairly sure his thoughts didn't give it away - he was very good at not thinking about it - but Snape clearly reached a conclusion himself. If someone who looked like Lucius had been fucking Draco-as- Voldemort, and if it was highly unlikely Draco would allow someone to do that there was really only one possibility.  
  
Draco waited for the question, his fingernails biting into the flesh of his palms, until Snape got up and left the room.  
  
* * *  
  
Snape was always on time, so Draco immediately began pondering possible crises when the door didn't open at the appropriate moment. They hadn't spoken in more than a day. That wasn't a long time, of course, if you ignored the fact that Snape could hear his every thought. Draco felt strangely like he'd been talking to himself.  
  
Perhaps he should knock? He'd never had to knock before, even when Snape hadn't been able to hear him in the corridor thinking 'come on you stubborn confusing prying insensitive unhelpful git open the bloody door'. Nothing.  
  
"Come in," Snape said distinctly, the moment he knocked.  
  
He was in the usual place, behind his desk, with the usual ledger open in front of him and a primed quill in hand.  
  
"Sit," Snape said, and then he seemed to hesitate, which put Draco rather on edge. "The spell was a necessity, but at present I am confident you have no intention to entrap us."  
  
Draco ventured part of a smile.  
  
"Therefore, as far as possible I will ignore your thoughts. We will carry on as if. . ."  
  
The words disappeared. Although he knew years of practice meant his face did not respond, Draco couldn't help the internal shudder at Snape's obvious disgust. The hurt floated through his mind like a red wavering haze.  
  
He opened his eyes to a red sky, the thick covering of bristling grass pressed the chain links into his skin, a movement of air sped across his skin in time with the sweeping clouds, and the mark on his arm burned. There was a soft sound and a soft scent and a voice in his ear.  
  
"Draco?"  
  
Draco opened his eyes and Snape was looking at him with concern.  
  
"What happened just then?"  
  
Draco just shook his head.  
  
"Your thoughts just disappeared."  
  
Red sky and red clouds, Draco thought, and Snape raised an eyebrow.  
  
"Perhaps you should tell me about the red sky."  
  
* * *  
  
"I don't remember."  
  
Snape glared at the page in front of him, quill still poised.  
  
"You know I'm not lying."  
  
"I only know what you do remember, not what you might."  
  
Well, if I was going to repress things, Draco thought, I could choose a few more interesting pieces of information than whether Roland and Evers arrived at a meeting together or merely at the same time.  
  
Snape put down the quill. "Why do we spy, Draco?"  
  
Draco sighed - "To know what Voldemort is planning, what the Death Eaters are doing."  
  
"That's what we achieve through effective spying - I asked why?"  
  
"I've told you that," Draco said.  
  
"Tell me now."  
  
"I want to help you" - Draco remembered Severus Snape on the second landing of the Manor's stairs in a pool of dawn light, dropping his hood and running long pale hands through his hair in exhaustion, and Draco wanted to help. He remembered his father pacing the west wall of the library, dragging tangles from his long fair hair with white fingers, and cursing the stupid misdirection of this war before noticing Draco behind the high- backed reading chair and sending him to bed, or at least away. "I want to help my father."  
  
"He won't thank you for it. And neither will I."  
  
"I'm sure you have a point with this, Professor," Draco said, not bothering to filter the bitterness in his voice.  
  
"While you do this for other people, it will never be as crucial as if you did it for yourself." Snape closed the ledger. "Not because you are a Slytherin, Draco, but because you are human - we can strive for others, but we are passionate for ourselves."  
  
He couldn't remember. Evers struggled to get the hood just right as they walked in. Crabbe gave him that askance superior look and nodded a greeting to Roland, who waited for Evers and nodded. . . "Separately, not together," Draco said.  
  
Snape made his note in a satisfied way.  
  
"Doing it because of you and Lucius is still self-centred," Draco said. Snape indicated his interest by not cutting him off. "I want both of you to be safe for purely selfish reasons."  
  
"But if you had to give your life to stop Voldemort, and there was nothing for you to gain from Lucius or I? Can it be enough about you that it's more important than your own survival?"  
  
After a breath Draco said, "No."  
  
"Then it won't be enough," Snape said, getting to his feet and moving over to make tea, as he always did when the questioning was over.  
  
Draco slammed his eyes together and did not think - would not think. It made no difference what he did or why, it was never enough, never good enough for more than a moment or an afternoon. There was a rising red rush behind his eyes and this time he wanted to be there.  
  
* * *  
  
The warm wind wrapped around his skin, and Draco opened his eyes to the red sky. He rippled his hand through the hissing grass as he swept his arm in an arc embracing the wind and the sky and the earth against his pale skin like, there, the white mark, a snake in a rose if you knew what to look for. Almost invisible, it pulsed in time with his blood.  
  
What was that rhyme about red sky and shepherds; was there rain here; did the days pass? He shifted to see the horizon, and the grass and the chain links dragged roughly against his skin. Not painful, or not in a bad way. Like the trail of his father's fingernails, like the echo of Snape's whipped commands. The mark throbbed hard, then, and began to burn as theirs must when the Dark Lord summoned them. He raised his arm as if this shadowless land could offer better light.  
  
He watched, fascinated, as the faintest shadow of red began to form in the petals of the rose. A thought whispered to him that their mark was black, scorched channels in the flesh. He tried to shake the thought off, but the colour was fading again, and the clouds were rushing faster in a black wind. He strained to see where the rose became a snake and the snake became a rose but the light was fading, and someone put a hand to his wrist in the sunset like spilled blood, whispering to him, "Draco come back."  
  
"I will," he promised to the grass and the warm air, before the painful rush of blue light around him forced his eyes open.  
  
Snape was holding a glass to his mouth, and he drank the syrupy liquid, which numbed his lips.  
  
* * *  
  
"We need to isolate the triggers which send you into the trance state," Snape was saying, pacing carefully around his stacks of papers and books and delicate instruments that Draco had never seen him touch. "It might also be useful to isolate the symbolic traditions associated with the rose and snake icon as that also seems to be a constant - I'll check with Dumbledore about the safe chamber, and tomorrow instead of training you will search the library catalogues."  
  
"I don't mind," Draco said. "It doesn't feel dangerous."  
  
"Well you should," Snape snapped, "and in fact I insist that you do. You are utterly helpless in that condition."  
  
"I. . . all right," Draco said, although he couldn't help wondering what was meant to happen there, with the mark and the wind, why it seemed so important that the rose become red.  
  
"This is serious, Draco," Snape was saying, crouched closely by his chair. "There's no reason the spell should have produced this reaction and every time you take longer to pull yourself free."  
  
"I'm always here," Draco said softly, reaching out to touch Severus's hair, ghosting his fingers along his jaw. "Unless I'm there," he added, furrowing his brow in slight confusion.  
  
Snape didn't move away from his hand, but rather watched Draco's expression intently.  
  
I love you, Draco thought. He watched Snape blink as his lips pressed together in concern. The look of disgust was probably more flattering than pity, he thought.  
  
"No," Snape said softly, moving away. "Not disgust, or pity. Sorrow, perhaps."  
  
Draco couldn't help but hate that, consciously summoning the pride and pleasure he felt in his father's arms, from his father's unspoken desire. "Don't feel sorry for me. I don't."  
  
Snape silently closed the books and returned them to the shelf. With his back turned to Draco he said, "Then perhaps I do pity you after all."  
  
* * *  
  
TBC 


	5. The Fold 1

The Fold  
  
Severus felt the first warning in the middle of Ravenclaw 5th, and as they'd been studiously attending to his outline of the NEWTs program in Potions it did not go unmarked. The searing pain radiating out from the Mark was followed closely by a wave of nausea.  
  
"Professor?" he heard one of the girls say as if from a distance. He clasped a hand on the edge of the desk and turned back to the board, concentrating on erasing the outline there.  
  
"You will reproduce this outline for me by the end of the week, complete with notes about which elements of this year's course are most important to it." There were murmurs and even a groan - Severus smiled grimly to himself. It was a good day when he could make older Ravenclaws groan over homework. Usually, it was a good day.  
  
* * *  
  
By evening the call was imperative, the pain thrumming through his blood and huddling blackly behind his eyes. His arm was utterly numb, a vacuum centering an excruciating whorl of sensation. Severus had to concentrate to recall the password to Dumbledore's office.  
  
He flinched at the Headmaster's hand on his arm, and buckled under the wash of clarity and calm.  
  
". . . consonantia est," he finally heard as he opened his eyes.  
  
Albus drew Severus to his feet - so, he'd actually fallen - and led him to a chair. "How can I help, dear boy?"  
  
Severus waved the Headmaster away, and he went. By the time he returned, bearing an aromatic tea (bergamot, lemon and comfrey, Severus automatically registered), Severus had recognised the small insistent presence of Draco's thoughts, flickering at the back of his mind. Was he all right, was something wrong, where was he? Without considering it carefully for once, Severus responded with a reassuring thought. Something like a dark red curtain swept across his consciousness and was gone.  
  
"Severus?"  
  
Severus took the tea. Odourless borrell root, he added to the list, and drank it gladly despite the oily texture that the flavouring couldn't conceal.  
  
As the potion cut through his pain and his protective dissociation, he faintly felt Draco anxiously wondering how he could shake Crabbe and Goyle to look for Severus. He knew it was impossible - the mental link was entirely one-sided - but Draco had been able to sense his pain.  
  
The boy's fear echoed distantly in his mind, but he pushed consciousness of Draco's thoughts aside, as he'd trained himself to do over recent weeks. He concentrated on the tea and on Albus.  
  
"Voldemort," he said. "A call which clearly brooks no delays."  
  
Albus merely nodded.  
  
"Malfoy Manor," Severus continued. "Which has never happened before. Despite Malfoy's boasting he's never been first in Voldemort's plans." He met the headmaster's careful concern with his own. "There's bound to be a specific reason."  
  
Albus nodded. "I will keep a close eye on Draco."  
  
Severus let the old man's tone pass in exhaustion.  
  
"There's something gone strangely awry with this spell, Albus. I think you need to know."  
  
* * *  
  
Evans was anxiously pacing the small foyer to the ballroom when Severus Flooed in.  
  
"Snape," he said with relief. "Could you have cut it any closer? The Dark Lord is. . . he's waiting." Severus didn't answer. Waiting was not a state in which one wanted to meet Voldemort. Evans was a lesser minion as a Death Eater, just as he'd been a lesser minion as a Hogwarts Prefect. Lucius Malfoy's puppet then, and the puppet of a puppet now.  
  
The puppet's florid face turned away into the darkened room. At the far end the ballroom was lit with the red and gold of low fires , and Severus schooled his features to conceal his disdain for the showy display.  
  
"You've arrived," Lucius Malfoy said from the shadows half way up the room. "I'm surprised you didn't find it more urgent."  
  
The tall pale figure moved out into the column of light extending from the doorway.  
  
His consciousness of Draco's thoughts was many miles away in Hogwarts' grounds, but shadows of things he'd seen and heard hovered at the edge of his mind and Severus turned away to avoid communicating some of what he thought.  
  
"Do you have something on your mind, Snape?" Lucius asked in a clipped tone as Severus moved past him. He supposed turning away was in fact a communication of some kind - particularly for a Malfoy.  
  
"I trust I am in fact urgently wanted," Severus said without looking back, and Lucius let it pass, at least for now.  
  
* * *  
  
Partly because he'd spent most of his evenings with Snape for weeks now, and partly because one didn't question a Malfoy, Draco wasn't missed until curfew.  
  
* * *  
  
Severus had endured an extended session of Voldemort terrifying all lesser beings until, eventually, the corpses of several Muggles and the unconscious body of a tardy lower level Death Eater, who'd made the unfortunate mistake of constructing an excuse for his lateness, were hauled away. The Dark Lord imperiously dismissed the lower ranks back to their lower lives, and reclined sinuously in the Roman chair Lucius had provided.  
  
"Severus," Voldemort rasped eventually, after an observant pause, "how considerate of you to join us."  
  
"I have no excuse, My Lord, except protecting the secrecy of my services to you," Severus said, with a slight bow.  
  
"Yes, of course. Your services to me." Severus carefully did not hesitate in deepening his obesiance. "What would you say those services are, Severus?"  
  
"My Lord knows best how to use me," Severus said, now a little concerned by the drift of this conversation, and bordering on alarmed at the satisfied smile on Malfoy's face.  
  
The boy couldn't have tricked him, despite the spell's strange effects. He was confident the boy. . . felt strongly about him. But not more strongly than he felt about his father, he had to admit, and that intensity of. . . interest. . . could be served in other ways. Damn, he should have pushed for more clarity about Draco's desires - would the boy trade for him as some kind of reward?  
  
"Yes. And perhaps it is time this use was less cautious." Voldemort's smile unfurled more widely than it should have according to the physics of a human face. His arms flexed on the upturned ends of the chair as if also shifting in pleased anticipation.  
  
"Perhaps, Lord Voldemort," Severus said, "you might tell me how my position should be changed."  
  
"We have another spy at Hogwarts," Lucius said with a pleased smile.  
  
"Your son," Severus said.  
  
Lucius nodded.  
  
"He will do an excellent job," Severus said, and watched Malfoy's smile falter infinitesimally. "I look forward to guiding him in dealing with Dumbledore and the Order personally," he added, and the smile clearly stretched slightly.  
  
Voldemort's attention to their exchange struck both of them more or less at once - Lucius relaxed and Snape collected a disinterested poise.  
  
"Such an interesting son you have, Lucius," Voldemort replied. "Shall we see him now?"  
  
As Malfoy clapped his hands to summon a house-elf, Severus ordered his thoughts by carefully scanning the room for possible avenues of escape. He was by no means prepared to die at Voldemort's hands to no purpose, although he was more than inclined to ensure Malfoy died with him if it came to that. He was only mildly irritated that he meant Malfoy Sr and not Draco given the boy's treachery.  
  
* * *  
  
From Draco's demeanour one really would think he served the Dark Lord. However, the boy's first thoughts on entering the Manor flew to Severus. "You're here," he had felt distinctly in his mind as if at the end of a long trailing anticipation.  
  
Again Severus could feel some of the observation flowing back the other way. Just the merest touch, a tentative flicker of sensation, but there nonetheless. "You're well," he felt Draco think, seconds after the boy was escorted into the ballroom.  
  
Draco bowed formally to Voldemort and, just as carefully, to his father. It was polished and careful on the surface, but Severus felt Draco's flaring anxiety under Voldemort's smile, and something almost desperate reaching out to Lucius as his son acknowledged him. Lucius gave Draco a pleased nod, and Severus felt the boy's flush of excited pleasure.  
  
There was a crystalline image in his head for just a moment - Draco and Lucius in Diagon Alley, his father laughing at Draco's caustic remark about the boy serving at Flourish & Blott's, resting a hand on his son's shoulder. Draco's face hurt from smiling.  
  
The image that followed, as Draco turned to acknowledge Snape's presence, and perhaps his thoughts, might have visibly shaken Severus if he hadn't been returning Draco's slight bow. Draco bent panting, one knee on a high- backed chair with broad winged arms, his hand clutched around the pale green sheen and weft of upholstery, his father's hand pressed into his upper back and the other hooked under his hip, angling his pelvis up into his hard sensual thrusts. It wasn't brutal, or even cold; it was a warm sense of belonging and pride.  
  
Severus felt a wave of pity and regret before he could filter those thoughts. Draco flinched and angled his eyes towards the floor.  
  
Lucius coolly stepped into the situation as he saw it. "Your duty to your family and your family's cause is far more important than mere school protocols, Draco; you need not be concerned about Professor Snape's disapproval."  
  
Draco and Severus met one another's eyes for a moment, and although nothing specific was exchanged for their own reasons both Lucius and Severus were evidently pleased.  
  
"So satisfying," Voldemort said, stretching out a hand. Snape was a little disturbed by his own reluctance to watch Draco be embraced by Voldemort, but he was somewhat compensated by Malfoy's own obvious irritation. The Dark Lord was unlikely to miss it either.  
  
Voldemort's skin was discoloured and uneven, his arms and fingers somewhat elongated, all of which seemed especially defined in comparison to Draco's pale clear skin and delicate build. A scarred hand twisted fingers up to caress the boy's face. Draco seemed to lean into the touch, and Voldemort's approval was evident in every slight readjustment of his attention, away from a careful if oblique observation of the men and wrapping tightly around the boy's responses.  
  
Severus itched to react and felt the tension in Lucius also.  
  
"It doesn't matter," Draco thought. Severus thought it did and, for the first time, pushed on his contact with Draco's consciousness. He could see, like a barrier of tangled iridescent strings, Draco's efforts to shield and deflect his thoughts. With the lightest push he caught flashes of the Dark Lord's arms around Draco's naked waist and chest, mottled against his whiteness and twisted where he was smooth. Severus was sickened, and the boy flinched at the thought.  
  
Although Snape was slamming down a barrier between them as it happened he couldn't avoid the wash of desire and regret that flowed from Draco.  
  
They waited patiently through Voldemort's careful exploration of the boy's exposed skin - his wrists and hands, his face and neck. Draco didn't struggle or complain, but he'd stopped responding with pleasure as well.  
  
"Severus will be carefully watching and coaching you, my small snake. Perhaps he shall train you to be Master of Potions in his place, so he can serve me in other ways." Voldemort pressed a hand firmly into Draco's oesophagus, openly observing the responses of both men.  
  
"The boy has never shown a particular inclination for Potions," Severus said, concentrating on the even rhythm of his own voice.  
  
"He will learn," Lucius said with obvious haste. Severus sighed in inward relief.  
  
"Yes, of course he will," Voldemort said.  
  
The boy's face was coloured and taut, but he hadn't struggled or tried to cry out. Voldemort pulled him closer by his throat and pressed his mouth to Draco's in a painful image of a kiss. The boy gasped into the Dark Lord's mouth, and Severus cautiously glanced at his father, whose face was utterly blank.  
  
* * *  
  
TBC 


	6. The Fold 2

The Fold, part 2  
  
Severus walked back through the Slytherin corridor more or less on the way to his rooms. He was sure Draco hadn't returned as the mental link was absolutely silent, but he focussed on the boy as he passed by Slytherin just in case.  
  
Any variation on the news that Draco was at home due to a family emergency would have come to him already as Head of House, so asking Albus would be pointless. And obvious.  
  
He didn't miss the constant presence of Draco's attention, ambitions and pleasures. He was, however, concerned for the welfare of a student in his house, and far more seriously concerned about the risk this particular student posed to the Order, and to his own safety.  
  
As he had for many years, Severus instinctively checked his protective wards as he entered his rooms. The main lights flickered and rose as he passed through the office to his private rooms.  
  
He wasn't interested in food now any more than he had been in the Hall, but the house elves had left something. Or house-elf - the one he'd fought with over Potter in the summer. Its indignity at being implicated in Potter's slow poisoning had been comical, but the creature took the saving of Potter's life very seriously indeed. Now, as some kind of strange recompense, it watched his diet and, he suspected, monitored his clothes. Last month was not the first time a favourite worn robe had disappeared, requiring him to replace it. At this rate. . . never mind.  
  
He picked absently at the cold chicken and cucumber salad.  
  
Perhaps he should just sleep.  
  
* * *  
  
Severus woke in the night, which happened often. But as he woke he felt he was struggling to move from a strange heavy darkness, and a sound almost like whispering that he couldn't pin down, towards a red warmth. A sweep of dark clouds rushed above him as he opened his eyes. He tried to pull himself upright and look around, but he seemed to be somehow pinned to the ground. He could sense rather than see a dark horizon, and his fingers caught in short, lush, unnaturally even grass.  
  
Severus?  
  
He knew where Draco lay, as if he'd seen him there moments before. Turning his head now he did see him, exceedingly pale against the verdant green and lain out beneath a sky flushing crimson to burgundy to black. Draco's eyes were closed, and his skin seemed to blur into his silver-blond hair and the silver mesh of the strange robe he was wearing.  
  
"Draco?"  
  
He watched the boy shiver and his closed eyes flicker.  
  
"Look at me Draco," he said, and the head finally tipped towards him, eyes slowly opening - grey eyes, not like steel and not like ice - not cold or hard eyes at all, or not here. Ethereal as he appeared, this Draco had the eyes of a boy.  
  
"This is the place made by the spell?" Severus said, "Or accessed by the spell?"  
  
Draco nodded. "Although it seems really different with you here," he said, or rather thought - his mouth didn't move and his voice was far too soft to have carried the six feet between them.  
  
"Why am I here?"  
  
"I don't know," Draco said, and his mouth curved into a smile. "I would have brought you before if I knew how."  
  
"Draco, what's happening outside of here? Where are you?"  
  
"I'm not sure," the boy's voice said, his mouth and eyes still smiling. "I can never quite remember, and the longer I'm here. . . . Oh, look at this!" he said, and suddenly they were sitting side by side on the grass, the chains of Draco's robe falling over the black sweep of his own, an unlikely swathe of silk which flared out across the grass.  
  
If this was some space in Draco's mind, as he suspected, then Severus really hadn't wanted to know that yards of black silk was how the boy fantasised about him.  
  
"Actually," Draco said, "it's not what I'd pick for you at all. But here, look at this."  
  
Draco tipped his arm up so the chain mesh slid away from his inner arm. Silver and white filigrees of raised flesh traced out the shape of a rose, with a snake twining through and around the petals. Severus reached out to it without thinking, about to ask if Voldemort had put it there when his memories identified the design.  
  
At the same time, Draco said, "No, it's from the room where the spell was cast."  
  
He had hesitated, but now Severus let his finger touch the very edge of the flower, which instantly flushed with colour, spreading out from his finger and shadowing into the folds and up onto the next petal and on. The snake shifted and slid, brushing up against the tide of red and filling out with shades of emerald and dark green as it passed. There was a soft sound of rough against smooth - the scrape of scale against petal or of chain against silk - the first sound Severus was sure happened outside of his mind in this place.  
  
"So that's what it was for," Draco said beside him, his arm resting in Severus's hand, and then everything passed away into darkness.  
  
* * *  
  
Malfoy  
  
I thought you should know that the boy's ongoing absence has generated a significant amount of discussion, and if he is to take an active part in our work here it is imperative he return immediately.  
  
Snape  
  
Despite the encryption and the sealing and protection charms, Severus knew he didn't have to say that the writing of this note indicated how important the matter was. And in fact there had been some discussion of Draco's absence in the staff common room - Black, the posturing oaf, had gone so far as to ask whether the boy should be readmitted without being tested for the Mark. Severus had been more than usually annoyed with the man's bluster given that it touched on his own deepest concern about why Voldemort was holding the boy.  
  
Certainly there were other possibilities, all of them nasty, but rape, torture, enforced murder, all often interchangeable where Voldemort was concerned, were things a strong mind might overcome in time. With help. But the Mark was a permanent burden, a drain on one's will, a deep spiritual stain - and in fact something he hadn't felt all day. Its presence was insistent, like a rough scar in an inconvenient position, something he was always half aware of. . . except for now.  
  
Severus almost ran back to his rooms, barely glancing at his wards on the way, shutting the door impatiently behind him and casting the protective charms by rote. He anxiously unclasped the buttons and yanked up his sleeve. The mark was there, but traced out in his flesh in silver and white lines of scar tissue - colourless, painless, and mute.  
  
* * *  
  
He'd checked the scar more than once, and then even checked it in the mirror, which reassured him in a puzzled tone that it was mostly gone, and asked if he was quite all right. Severus caught his own strange expression in his reflection and said, rather unconvincingly, that he was fine. The mirror launched into a long and enthusiastic account of how terrific, how splendid, how utterly super it was to hear that - it had been a gift from Albus and for seven years he'd managed never to reply or speak to it - but he barely heard, nodding absently before going out to find a large shot of whisky.  
  
The slight absence of sensation that came with the loss of the mark was impossible to ignore, and seemed to make sleep impossible. Whenever he closed his eyes the possible ramifications of this floated through his head in order of increasing disaster. He turned over again.  
  
Severus?  
  
Draco.  
  
He was out of bed and retrieving his robe before Draco thought, I'm coming to you now.  
  
Severus stood in his bedroom, holding his robe half undone - can you hear my thoughts, Draco?  
  
I think I can hear you when you're upset, just faintly - broad feelings rather than sentences. I like it. I could feel you worrying about me. I'm coming down the stairs now.  
  
Severus met him at the door. There was a decided tingle along his arm as Draco passed. He shut and resealed the door, wondering about that, and listening to Draco's anxiety over his reception here and over what kind of secrets, if any, Severus was going to allow him to keep.  
  
"Tell me, then," he said, "if you don't want me to try and find out."  
  
Draco's carefully composed face seemed such an unlikely cover for the turmoil of his thoughts.  
  
"I'll pour us both a drink," Severus said.  
  
Draco followed him, wanting something, a welcome, an admission, an embrace.  
  
"Are you hungry?" Severus continued, "I have food left from dinner."  
  
"No, thank you," the boy said, while his thoughts filled with disappointment and new anxieties about what Severus might require him to say. And there it was - Severus had the decanter in his hand as the unbidden image appeared and he only just held onto it. He turned back to Draco, who was already turning away. Shame, sadness, fear.  
  
"If I'd not joined you it still would have happened."  
  
Which meant, they both recognised, that Lucius had known all these years it would come to this. Watching that small spoilt boy and nurturing his sneering superiority and waiting for the right time to begin preparing him for this.  
  
Moving to sit down, inclining his head away from Severus, Draco remembered the stricken look on his father's face - Voldemort's clammy hand on his cheek, a nail leaving a single sharp trail, and Lucius's eyes.  
  
"I began to expect it," he said, "probably before he thought it was unavoidable."  
  
With hands that didn't shake, because he'd known and seen worse things, Severus poured the drinks, keeping his mind off Draco's shifting thoughts. As he handed him the glass Severus jumped a little; the contact of their fingers reminded him of his dream.  
  
Draco ran over Severus's response in his mind, remembering his father's jealous questions about the new tutorials. He instructed himself not to look the man's fingers, or his mouth, and then laughed because Snape would have heard that.  
  
Draco looked up from his drink and smiled. Severus smiled back.  
  
"Blaise'll never believe me."  
  
Severus quirked an eyebrow at him.  
  
"That you smiled at me," Draco explained, and thought to Snape how incredibly hot that eyebrow thing was. Severus smirked. And the smirk too, Draco thought.  
  
"Hiding behind the spell now?" Severus said.  
  
"As long as saying that aloud is likely to get me thrown out."  
  
Severus took his drink to the bedroom door. "I'm not going to throw you out tonight, Draco - we've got a lot to talk about."  
  
Draco's mind stuttered, though his face didn't reflect it. Severus was more than a little impressed, the boy had learnt a lot, but then he'd had very good motivation. He waited for a response.  
  
"I don't want your pity," Draco said quietly, "but if you think I'd turn down a pity fuck with you out of pride you've seriously underestimated how much I want you."  
  
Severus moved into the bedroom, juggling reasons he shouldn't with reasons why he must. They were beyond what he wanted now, but he couldn't deny that right now he wanted to offer the boy comfort.  
  
He couldn't repress a bitter internal sneer - as if there was anyone less well qualified to offer comfort. Except perhaps for this boy in these circumstances.  
  
There was too much at stake in his choosing the Order over his father for there to be a mistake here. Severus lifted the light on the candles a little and turned to watch the boy approach, flushed with expectations, and there was no refusing him.  
  
* * *  
  
TBC 


	7. Exultet 1

Exultet, Pt 1  
  
Draco thought how ridiculous it was that he felt nervous now. A series of images shuttered through his mind, although he tried to shake them off. He gave a small self-conscious shrug as his thoughts stuck briefly on he and Blaise playing at sex with Professor Snape.  
  
Severus took his arm, just about the wrist, and Draco tried to laugh at how his heart leapt. Funny to find there was one there.  
  
Severus put his mouth to Draco's ear and said, "Don't." Pulling the young man closer, he added, "You're going to tell me what you want to do."  
  
Draco said, "Everything."  
  
Severus began to unbutton Draco's robe, and he concentrated on just the sheer present fact of Severus's fingers working at his clothes, and nothing about the past, the meaning, the future.  
  
Severus stopped, and waited until Draco looked at him, slightly up at him. He tipped the boy's face back further with one hand and kissed Draco very softly, lips just touching and moving away. Draco closed his eyes for a moment, however much he desperately wanted to see it, and let it feel like Severus Snape really kissed him.  
  
Severus was unfastening his inner robe now - the fitted kind, with old fashioned metal clasps, as Draco had observed many times. He watched the long fingers pull the robe away and begin to work at the exposed buttons on Snape's shirt, and then everything seemed somehow to shift into sharper focus. Draco began to remove his own clothes.  
  
* * *  
  
The way Severus lowered Draco to the bed, the slide of his naked chest, stomach, cock and thighs into place along his own, ran through Draco's head like a dream. It was like he was watching himself from the outside, partly in disbelief, partly with surging desire. The two emotions seemed to crash into each other repeatedly. Draco closed his eyes again, and the candles shaded the dark behind his eyelids almost red.  
  
"Come back, Draco," Severus was saying, and Draco opened his eyes and breathed out. Severus looked down at him and Draco couldn't imagine what he might be thinking. One hand came up and untangled the sticky lines of Draco's hair.  
  
Lucius didn't know, he couldn't tell; Voldemort couldn't tell, he couldn't force it from him. He suspected they both suspected, but not with enough cause to stop using him.  
  
"Stop thinking about it, Draco."  
  
Severus Snape was pressed naked against him, long and pale and lean, like the husband in that nursery rhyme with the pictures where he had long hair.  
  
Severus stopped, one hand on Draco's neck, the other on his hip, and looked away.  
  
"Severus?"  
  
Severus rolled Draco in his arms so he was tucked into his chest, and pulled the covers up across them. "I want you to get some sleep now, Draco." The boy stiffened. "I'd love to pursue this further, but I think not right now. Tonight I want you to sleep with me."  
  
Draco almost protested, but he was so very tired. He squirmed a little with comfortable pleasure against Severus's body, his leg twisting in between the other man's - just like, he thought, Blaise always did with him, in those rare moments he allowed it.  
  
Severus made a disapproving noise. "If you compare me to Zabini again, even in your head, I will have you sleep in the bath."  
  
Draco giggled. Severus instructed him again to sleep now, and Draco wriggled against him, trying to say how much he'd wanted more than this without giving up the peace of just lying in Severus's arms. He didn't want Severus to doubt how important he was, how much more important than anyone else, which is why he'd put Lucius in this terrible situation. . .  
  
"Do I need to stun you in order to get you to sleep, Draco?"  
  
But he had wanted so much more, and if not now. . .  
  
"If not now then another time. Perhaps tomorrow," Severus said, running his hand down Draco's back to rest in the small dip above his buttocks against the slightest covering of soft hair.  
  
Draco slept.  
  
* * *  
  
Between the green grass and the red sky, Draco breathed in the warm soft air and rolled into Severus's arms. Chain against silk, silver against black, he ran his arm along the soft slippery fabric that covered Severus's chest and stomach.  
  
"I always knew you would feel like this."  
  
"I fancy I'm a lot less taut and muscular in real life," Severus said close by. "If this is indeed your fantasy version of me then I imagine the real thing will be rather disappointing."  
  
"I don't believe it."  
  
Severus huffed. Draco laughed and said, "Can I kiss you?"  
  
"If you want," Severus said, and Draco rolled across him, silk and chain slipping in a soft whispering, scratching sound.  
  
Draco kissed the mouth beneath him. The second kiss twisted and pressed, and Severus let Draco lead. Pulling back to look at Severus's mouth that he had kissed Draco felt the shock of pleasure tangle through his thoughts, ripple across his skin, and tighten around his cock like a loose fist. He dragged himself higher on Severus body, grasped his shoulder and his hair and kissed him hard, his tongue pushing into Severus's mouth and his now hardening cock weighing him down into Severus's body. He pushed and turned his hips against Severus and Severus let go the hesitation and pushed back, winding an arm around Draco and pushing the kiss deeper with his hand on the back of Draco's head.  
  
Draco groaned, moved his hips in small intense ellipses against the rise of Severus's hip, and lifted his head to groan again. Snape put his mouth to Draco's neck, and then hissed as his arm suddenly caught fire - tearing himself away from the boy he threw back the black sleeve to see the snake in what remained of his Dark Mark writhe and burn and turn towards him.  
  
* * *  
  
One moment Severus was looking at the bright flickering green tongue of the snake twined through his now colourless Mark and the next he was pulling himself from the bed at the sound of Albus calling his name.  
  
"Albus?" he said as he pulled his robe around him. The headmaster's head hung suspended above the low licks of flame in the fireplace.  
  
"Severus, thank goodness. I was growing concerned."  
  
"Ah. I'm sorry. I could explain but. . ." He heard Draco's waking thoughts in the other room, twisting into sheets he thought smelled like Severus, like sex and hope, and then realised he was alone.  
  
Dumbledore clearly anticipated the question Severus hadn't finished. "Lucius Malfoy contacted me urgently this evening. I've tried to delay him, but I'm afraid there's nothing I can do as he's already contacted the Minister and several other members of the board."  
  
Severus heard Draco's attention lock onto Albus's voice and had to school himself to say calmly, "What does Lucius want?"  
  
"He wanted Draco, on an urgent matter."  
  
Severus scoffed.  
  
"As it was indeed urgent," Albus said, and Severus almost asked but the almost agitated look on Dumbledore's face was enough to let him finish, "I agreed to find Draco."  
  
Tensing slightly, and feeling Draco tense rather more dramatically behind him, Severus said, "And you thought to look for him here?"  
  
Albus's gaze flicked in the direction of the bedroom door as Severus felt Draco emerge, fumbling with his robe with nervous fingers.  
  
"Mr Malfoy insisted he would be with you. In your room."  
  
Draco drew an audible breath and seemed to flounder mentally, a jumble of Lucius-centred images and terrifying possibilities. Severus was finding it more than a little difficult to think with Draco's panic in his mind and Albus's keen concerned eyes on him and this was obviously not time to be confused. He concentrated on partitioning off Draco's thoughts.  
  
"What does Lucius want?"  
  
"He clearly wants to expose an improper relationship between you and his son. He is insisting his son return home, and you be expelled from Hogwarts."  
  
"Summarily, I suppose," Severus said. "Without investigation."  
  
"Or Hogwarts is drawn into a scandal."  
  
"He is taking very little trouble to make this look anything but premeditated."  
  
"Severus, there isn't much time. The Minister will be here after breakfast."  
  
"And my father?" Draco said from directly behind him.  
  
"I'm sure it won't come to that," the Headmaster said, but it didn't hold his usual conviction.  
  
"I didn't know this was what he was going to do," Draco said, and he was clearly not talking entirely to the Headmaster.  
  
"Of course not," Dumbledore replied anyway.  
  
Severus glanced at the clock, bordering on breakfast. "We'll be there in twenty minutes, Albus."  
  
Albus nodded but, as he was flickering out, said, "Perhaps you should make it sooner."  
  
* * *  
  
Outside the Headmaster's office, Severus paused a moment for Draco to catch up.  
  
I'm ready, Draco thought clearly, but behind that a thousand images and sounds leapt and jeered. Severus looked at the boy's composed expression and felt a little afraid for them both - a dangerous weakness that feeling. Draco met his eyes and wished for the green grass and the red sky and the warm wind.  
  
Snape turned back to the gargoyle over the door. "Lemon Brittle."  
  
TBC 


	8. Exultet 2

Exultet, part 2  
  
Minister Fudge entered Dumbledore's office just as Severus brought Draco in.  
  
"Snape," Fudge sneered with an edge of well-wrought hatred. When Severus ignored him he glanced at Draco and turned to Dumbledore. "I thought that we had agreed the boy would be sent back to his father, Headmaster." He glanced at Draco once more, almost uncomfortably. "I was quite clear about that."  
  
As Dumbledore reassured the Minister that everything would be just fine, and importuned him to sit down and have some tea, Severus positioned himself so that he could see the boy's face indirectly. He saw Draco register his attention without taking his eyes off the Headmaster.  
  
Draco clearly thought, like a voice above the distant babble of his fear, I was distraught over a serious falling out with my father and went to you for help as my Head of House.  
  
Severus barely repressed a scowl at the boy's impertinence in thinking to instruct him in subterfuge. Realising there was no reason to repress it under the circumstances, he scowled.  
  
Severus saw the line of Draco's mouth adjust minutely and his thoughts stumble over themselves trying not to be amused. The boy was juggling confusion and fear at least, was possibly even rather unstable; but considering he'd spent two days enjoying Voldemort's careful attentions he was still remarkably competent. Still strong.  
  
". . . but really that is all, thank you," Fudge was saying, as he finally succumbed to Dumbledore's tea.  
  
"Severus, Draco," the Headmaster said affably, as if he'd invited them to breakfast, "Please, do sit down." He moved chairs and the tea service into place with a sweep of his wand.  
  
Fudge spluttered his tea, slightly. "Headmaster Dumbledore, there is absolutely no question of the boy remaining here." He put his cup firmly on the desk. "I made it perfectly clear," he lowered his voice and glanced at Draco with obvious nervousness this time, "that his father wants him to be examined right away."  
  
Severus heard Draco's mental flinch and snapped out, "Examined how?"  
  
Fudge ignored him, and even reached for his cup again.  
  
"For signs of abuse," Dumbledore said.  
  
The clamour of Draco's mind disappeared and Severus turned to look at him. Draco blinked and dipped his head. Severus finally caught his eye but he could hear nothing.  
  
"If Mr Malfoy requires his son to have medical attention," Dumbledore said, "that can certainly be done here. Madame Pomfrey is a most accomplished medi-witch."  
  
Fudge went to object but Severus cut him off, "And what does Mr Malfoy require for me."  
  
"Under Veritaserum, to be interrogated about your relationship with his son and dismissed from service to Hogwarts when your abuse of him has been exposed," Fudge said, with rather more confidence and satisfaction.  
  
"I could agree," Severus said, and he felt a stir of panic from Draco, "but I will not."  
  
"Then," Fudge said with evident pleasure, "I must insist you leave Hogwarts at once, pending an inquiry - for the protection of the children. The boy may be examined here if you wish, Dumbledore," he added, rising, "but his father will collect him this evening as arranged. He is of course not to be left alone with the abuser."  
  
Dumbledore stood as well, uncommonly grave. "Very well, Minister."  
  
"No," Draco exclaimed sharply. "I won't go."  
  
"My boy," Fudge said with a nervous laugh, "you needn't worry. Your father isn't angry with you," he added after a moment of clear uncertainty. "Even a Malfoy, when young, can be subject to influence."  
  
"I will not," Draco said emphatically, although his face was unnervingly pale. "My father is a Death Eater and I will not go with him. I will stay at Hogwarts."  
  
Fudge sat, his expression shifted through a range of equally displeased and distressed responses. "That is impossible. . ." he began.  
  
"And I am fully prepare to take Veritaserum or anything else to testify to it."  
  
"You're just a boy. . ."  
  
"He is of age to make a formal charge and bear witness," Dumbledore said in a quiet firm voice.  
  
Severus looked away rather than watch, but he couldn't escape Draco's pitched supplication to himself, to something, to anything, that it work - and he didn't think he had a right to try. His skin crawled with the small memory flashes of Voldemort's hand and Lucius's mouth and the dark ballroom and heating water in a dark bathroom to wash away his own blood and the blood of others.  
  
Into the tense expectation, Fudge said bitterly, "I hope you know what you're doing, boy."  
  
Severus didn't look at Draco, only tried to think something conciliatory, something warming, something full of care. They were not emotions he had much experience with.  
  
"Snape still leaves, while we investigate all these. . . allegations," the Minister spat, getting to his feet again. "I will summon Aurors to remove him, and the boy will come with me."  
  
Dumbledore raised his hand and a door swiftly opened, admitting Remus Lupin. Sirius Black stood in the background, wearing an unpleasant expression.  
  
"Our Defence instructor, Remus Lupin, Minister Fudge; you have already met. And my friend Sirius Black, who of course you have also met, and who is staying with us at the present time."  
  
Fudge tensed but didn't respond.  
  
"I'm sure you'll agree that they are more than capable of escorting Professor Snape out of Hogwarts and ensuring he is somewhere safe?" The Minister agreed with a curt nod. "But as I have a duty of care to the boy, I must insist that he remain with me. The Aurors are of course welcome to interview him here."  
  
Fudge was only just managing an objection when Lupin signalled for Severus to follow him. Severus looked directly at Draco then and, carefully not thinking about the audience, inclined his head to him, almost with a smile. Draco smiled and internally thanked him, wanted him, needed him, asked him not to go and then apologised. . .  
  
"I'll see you soon, Draco," Severus said, walking directly to the door as the protests began.  
  
* * *  
  
"Do they put rapists in Azkaban, Remus?" Black asked with faux concern as they moved up the stairs. No Aurors had been summoned, or not yet, but they had drawn their wands.  
  
"There's no suggestion of that, Sirius, and you know it," Lupin said, glancing at Severus, who ignored them both.  
  
"Oh right. Would it be brainwashing or abuse of a minor then?"  
  
"Sirius," Lupin warned.  
  
"I think we'll have to assume brainwashing," Black continued, as they turned along another corridor. "The kid's not blind."  
  
"The safe room?" Severus asked evenly. Lupin nodded. "For how long?"  
  
"We're to come back for you when things have been settled."  
  
"Could be a while then, " Black said cheerfully. "Just as well you like your own company best. I can tell you, though, even being in a room with Snape is better than Azkaban."  
  
Lupin gave Black a furious look as they stopped in the corridor and waited. Severus ignored him, although Black was clearly still enjoying himself. Finally the door melted into view and Lupin took out a key and a bag which he passed to Severus.  
  
"Just a hint, Snape," Black said as he went through the door. "Wait till they can Apparate."  
  
* * *  
  
When the door clicked shut with a heavier sound than it should have made, Severus had been glad to be rid of Lupin's sympathy and Black's abuse. Two hours later it was certainly not the isolation that had become frustrating, but the lack of information. He needed to know what was happening - what was Dumbledore doing, what exactly did Lucius hope to accomplish and was he following orders or just freely intuiting them, and where was Draco?  
  
This time the silence in his mind where Draco might be positively echoed. He wasn't exactly surprised it didn't enter this room, but he was disappointed. It would have provided a useful awareness of external events.  
  
Had he been officially dismissed from Hogwarts? The boy would defend him; he was surprisingly certain of that. As would Albus, for his own reasons, but much would depend on how much effort Lucius was willing or able to expend and that depended on how much of this was actually jealousy or possessiveness and how much of it Voldemort's plan. There was nothing he could do here except analyse the situation from every available angle, and create both elaborate and straightforward plans based on things he did not know.  
  
Severus selected the least perishable of the food Lupin had left and retired to the couch. Transfiguration had never been one of his specialties, but one of the six long wooden benches became a quite comfortable couch. Paper had not been as difficult as he had expected (it was based on wood after all), but writing instruments had been more so. Fortunately, or not, he had time, and a candelabra with which to begin.  
  
He carefully coped the rose and serpent frieze to paper by means of a spell he had often used for recording the appearance of plantlife, mapped the dimensions and magical fields of his prison in detail, and finally determined it would be acceptable to sleep. Wards wouldn't work here, falling in silent colourful showers of light into useless glitter on the stone floor, but the door was the only entrance, only Dumbledore could reveal the door, and at this point if Dumbledore wasn't with him he was lost. 


	9. Exultet 3

Exultet, part 3  
  
Severus opened his eyes to the red sky moving in the warm current of air, and felt relief. So Draco came here when he was distressed, and Severus, linked to his consciousness by the same spell, joined him if he was asleep. Although Draco must be in some kind of trouble, the link was at least still active, and Severus was beginning to understand how it worked.  
  
He turned his head and saw only grass. With an effort he pulled himself up into a crouch, scanning the flat undifferentiated horizon. Mobility was a new development, but surely they would both come to this spot.  
  
"Draco?" he said aloud, and Draco was there, moving quickly towards him with the eyes of a boy and a calm smile, the folds of his silver robe shattering light across the grass from some impossible source.  
  
Draco took his hand and wrapped an arm around his waist. "Are you all right?" he said, the words tracing warmly over Severus's neck. "They took you to the safe room, didn't they?"  
  
Nodding, Severus pushed up Draco's sleeve with one hand to reveal the mark on his arm. The snake writhed amid the pulsing petals with a slippery scratching sound.  
  
"It's us," Draco laughed, moving forward so that the robe across his thighs slipped against Severus, "and you're the rose," he finished with a warm smile that Severus kissed, although he was nothing like a rose.  
  
There was something he needed to ask, Severus knew - he ran fingers over the tiny shining links up to Draco's neck, curling into the loose hair, and into the kiss, licking at his lips, sliding across his mouth, wrapping his arms around him - but it didn't seem to matter.  
  
* * *  
  
Draco lay back on the pool of black silk and watched Severus come to him, cover him with his eyes and his hands and his mouth. Draco writhed in the silk, cushioned all around by thick grass and warmed by the bright air, as between his legs Severus pushed long fingers past the taut muscles of his arse, holding him close and still with the other arm. Severus was in him and around him and his skin was white and smooth and his cock slid hard against Draco's leg as he was opened for it.  
  
The tips and the lengths of Severus's fingers worked him until his entire body was centred on that line between them, the thin membrane of the passage that Severus stroked. "Now," he said, and Severus came to him, covered him, and the sliding pressure as he was entered was a sharp deep cry in the warm air.  
  
* * *  
  
A cold shock at his shoulder and a burning pain in his arm dragged Severus awake to find Sirius Black looming over him.  
  
As Severus opened his eyes Black immediately moved away and Lupin said, apologetically, "We couldn't wake you."  
  
"Slipping as you age, Snape? Although I can't say I remember you ever being particularly alert."  
  
"Shut up, Sirius," Lupin said tiredly. "Dumbledore thought we should bring you."  
  
"Fudge?"  
  
"Is gone, as is Malfoy - with Malfoy, in fact. He's been arrested, pending a trial."  
  
"Draco?" Severus ignored Black's snort of disgust.  
  
"Made a very powerful statement," Lupin said awkwardly, and by Black's assessing glare Severus gathered that Lupin had been present but Black had not.  
  
"Although as he's a trained Slytherin," Black said, "there's always a chance. . ."  
  
"Draco refused to have Sirius present," Lupin said mildly. Severus didn't bother to repress a smirk.  
  
"Snape's only in here," Black said, gesturing bluntly, "because Dumbledore didn't believe the boy either."  
  
"The statement was very closely monitored." Lupin paused and sat down on the couch next to Severus as if it was a natural thing for him to do. "Did you know? About what they did to him?"  
  
Not at all sure if he knew the answer to that, Severus got up and paced. It was impossible to avoid the frieze, and not only because it dominated one end of the room. The scales on the snake seemed to shift slightly.  
  
"No. Not until it was too late, anyway."  
  
"Malfoy is still insisting you interfered with his son, and Fudge wants to pursue it, but I doubt he'll be able to demand your interrogation without any other support."  
  
There was a silence, but Severus wasn't going to answer the questions Lupin didn't ask, or encourage him to ask them.  
  
"Shall we go," Black growled from the door.  
  
"What do you need now?" Severus asked, already heading to the door.  
  
"Even when the questioning was complete," Lupin said from behind him, "Fudge kept pushing Draco for more detailed explanation, for more proof, and. . ."  
  
"He went into some kind of trance," Snape surmised, entering the corridor. Black marched ahead of them as if still escorting a prisoner.  
  
"I rather assumed you would understand when Dumbledore sent us for you. We were afraid to try any harder to bring him back to consciousness."  
  
Severus stopped at the top of the stairs and concentrated. Nothing. From somewhere he pulled the very fuzzy shiny almost completely unreal memory of Draco coming in his arms and around his prick, back arched, neck bared, his own slender prick pulsing hotly in Severus's hand.  
  
He heard the small recognition reverberate gently back through the link, like a kiss.  
  
"He's awake now," Severus said, moving quickly to the stairs and leaving Lupin to look after him with some interest. The door to the safe room swung shut behind them and bled into the stonework of the wall.  
  
* * *  
  
Lucius Malfoy was held in a tall solid building hung about with so much baroque ornamentation it was like a sign saying that strange and unusual things occurred within.  
  
If it was not the freedom he was used to, Draco thought, it certainly managed to maintain the Malfoy style - the rooms were expensive and tasteful but not opulent. Lucius had very particular preferences to which his excesses were directed. Although it was incomprehensible to others, including Severus, Draco actually had enjoyed being one of those preferences.  
  
It wasn't, he thought, as he was led down the hall by a strange little wizard who loped and flustered like a house-elf, that he didn't understand why he should despise his father, and much that he had done. It was just that he didn't. Lucius was his light-filled rooms, quiet evenings, favourite meals, interesting parties, new gloves and old books. He was his happy awareness that being Draco Malfoy was a good thing. And his hands were soft and so very strong.  
  
Aurors stood on either side of the door where the grovelling little wizard indicated his father was staying - until tomorrow, anyway. The left Auror, a very tall red-haired woman, Draco wondered if she was a Weasley of some kind, dipped her head towards him and indicated he could go in.  
  
"We'll be watching," she said, indicated a spinning ball of light suspended high on the opposite wall. "And no magic works in there, in case you were worried. It's a safe room."  
  
How ironic, Draco thought, and from the street outside where he would be impatiently pretending to read the back issue of a Potions journal he'd brought with him, he almost felt Severus's amusement.  
  
"Thank you," Draco replied, not missing the barely contained sneer on the male Auror's face. Funny that he was just as hated in Knockturn Alley as in the Ministry. He and Severus had. . .  
  
As the door swung open he really could feel his father's presence in the room.  
  
He wondered if Severus had insisted on being this close in order to observe the meeting or to offer support - or rather, he wondered how those reasons were combined. But as it was a safe room, the observation part wouldn't be very effective. He waited a full minute on the outside of the door, attracting the concerned and irritated attention of the aurors, to be sure Severus didn't insist that he not go in.  
  
Draco stepped quickly beneath the lintel before the thought of how much he depended on Severus's appeal could properly form. Not that there was really anything he had hidden from him any longer, but his own acknowledgement of that power had always remained indirect. And right at this moment it would sound a bit too obviously like he was replacing Lucius.  
  
"Are you coming in, Draco?" his father's pleasant voice said from the room to the left of the foyer, "or do you need to check in with the new Master first?"  
  
* * *  
  
"I believe I'm going to open another bottle of wine, Draco," Lucius said. "Are you sure you won't have some?"  
  
"I'm sure," he said, watching with increasing discomfort as Lucius tried to summon the next unopened bottle and, when he couldn't find his wand, cursed and went over to get it. Lucius never drank more than two glasses of wine. Lucius never swore, except with a purpose. Lucius' fine white hair was never, as it was now, ruffled, almost untidy. Draco looked away.  
  
"Indeed, my small snake," Lucius said with a bitter pleasure. "And how does it feel to have brought your father so low, brought him to ruin, in the finest classical tradition?"  
  
It would be unseemly to cry, and certainly also an insult to his father's training, but there was a bitter tight lump where Draco' voice should be.  
  
He heard Lucius rather heavily resume his seat. "I don't think they allow wine to the Death Eaters in Azkaban, do you Draco? But perhaps I won't desire it any longer after the Dementor's kiss? I've always thought desire was a property of the soul. Yes, even of those like mine. And you will appreciate that I've never been drunk in my life - I thought it might be a fitting celebration of our last meeting, and your victory."  
  
"I haven't won anything," Draco said, suddenly thinking that wasn't quite true.  
  
"Really? How forthright of you, how. . . Gryffindor," his father purred, and Draco couldn't help the flinch.  
  
"Very well, perhaps I have. Severus."  
  
His father laughed a great open laugh. "Really? Is that the price of my life, our fortune, your mother's comfort and the family name? Fucking Severus Snape?"  
  
Draco looked out the line of bay windows at the tall buildings and the blue sky and knew Severus was there waiting for him.  
  
Without warning his father was beside him, crouched by his chair, one hand pressing his wrist to the curved and polished wooden arm. "And does he tell you he loves you, Draco?"  
  
"I love him."  
  
"How tragic," Lucius said, just as suddenly walking towards the windows. The female Auror appeared in the doorway, wand drawn.  
  
"We don't need any help, Miss Everton," Lucius said dismissively. She looked at Draco. "For Salazar's sake, girl, if I'd wanted to harm him I would have strangled him a minute before you made it here."  
  
She took a step into the room, and Draco got up to meet her. "I'm not quite that helpless," he said, and she gave him a long look before returning to the foyer. Draco could still sense her hovering there.  
  
Lucius put a hand to the diaphanous inner drapes. "You have considered that you have now been entangled in Dumbledore's schemes." Before Draco could reply, Lucius added, "I say this merely for your benefit, Draco, as nothing short of death or Apparition will save me tomorrow."  
  
Draco walked closer to the window.  
  
"You do know he doesn't really want you. I would hate to think my son could be so deluded as to believe that. Everything is about power for Severus, and he has determined Dumbledore can or will give him more than Voldemort. We can understand that, Draco, but you must not allow yourself to believe he sees you as anything other than my son," he put a hand slowly to Draco's hair, "my boy," and ran it down to cup his jaw tightly, "mine."  
  
Draco almost took a step away and then turned into his father's touch. "Goodbye, Lucius," he said, and leant up to kiss his father's jaw, delicately. Lucius let him go. 


	10. Intermezzo

Intermezzo  
  
Severus and Draco entered Severus's rooms in silence. There was no question that Draco might go somewhere else.  
  
Draco had given his testimony, but there was still much more to go, and Draco didn't want to stay. His father looked himself again - cool, arrogant, beautiful, intelligent. It was excruciating to watch him and he couldn't shake the image of Lucius in the embrace of a Dementor, it was. . . Severus had not been called. Someone had tried to explain it to Draco, possibly Lupin, who always seemed to be everywhere right now, but it came down to him not being an appealling witness for either side.  
  
Draco could envy that, but he vaguely recalled that Severus had been where he was before. Had done what he'd done today.  
  
"Except not to my father, Draco," Severus said, reaching an arm around Draco's arms and chest, pulling him close and leaning his cheek against Draco's hair, which he'd left loose today. The tight groomed look seemed like a tribute to his father, and he couldn't bear the hypocrisy.  
  
Severus pulled him to the bed, and Draco went with him, happily allowing himself to be undressed. Lucius in the courtroom, giving him a cool and almost proud smile as he stepped down from damning him to a living death; Lucius under house arrest, smelling of wine and gripping his jaw.  
  
Severus was stroking his back through his shirt as he pulled the covers over them. "What do you want, Draco?"  
  
"Everything," Draco whispered. He turned in Severus's arms and began to kiss the man's neck between the open collar of his white shirt. He put a hand tentatively to Snape's stomach between the open tails of the shirt. It was soft, slightly hairy, and warm - so different from Lucius, all cool thin surfaces.  
  
"Fuck me?" Draco said into the warmth and cotton. "Please. Now."  
  
Severus moved a hand from Draco's back down to the curve of his buttocks and stroked the smooth skin there, stroking along the downy upper thighs and around to run his fingers along Draco's just stirring prick.  
  
Draco sighed and threw an arm around Severus's neck, beginning to undo the buttons on his shirt with the other hand and rocking lightly into the fist that stroked a little more firmly as he began to respond.  
  
Lucius never. . . Severus stopped.  
  
"I'm sorry," Draco said. "I don't mean to; I don't want to."  
  
Severus nodded and then realised Draco couldn't see him. "I understand that, but I can't. . ."  
  
"You hate to be reminded, it's. . . I know how sick it is." There was a long pause and he conceded, "At one level."  
  
Draco missed his father. It was a terrible thing to do, in the arms of the man he loved, he really did love, and who would, who could care for him; but he did, and it cut.  
  
* * *  
  
Dumbledore welcomed Draco cheerfully, congratulating him warmly on his strength and maturity. He clearly went to offer him tea and then changed the offer to anything he would like to drink, or eat.  
  
Draco felt like he might be ill. He should have let Severus come. Severus had wanted to come.  
  
"Have you heard of a decision?" the Headmaster asked, when Draco had obviously hesitated for longer than was appropriate.  
  
"No, but I don't think there is any doubt. My father was not in any doubt when I saw him in London yesterday." He paused and Dumbledore merely nodded. "I wanted to thank you for that. It was difficult, but I did really need to see him."  
  
"Of course, of course." The Headmaster broke his biscuit into two then three pieces, scattering sugar. Lifting one piece he said, "And is there something else you need from me, Draco?"  
  
Draco hesitated.  
  
"If there is something else it's probably best that you just tell me. I will tell you honestly, Draco, I find you a difficult boy to predict, or I would offer you what I think you might need now. Have you spoken with your mother?"  
  
Draco shook his head. "She owled me to say she is staying abroad. I don't think it is any great blow to Narcissa; not as one might expect anyway."  
  
"You sound quite a lot like your father, you know."  
  
Draco had a clear sense that he probably ought to be insulted, but he wasn't. "Is there any way my father can be kept out of Azkaban," he said hurriedly. "Deprived of his magic, kept in a safe room like the one where he was in London, kept away somehow." He stopped, finally catching Dumbledore's expression. "Is there anything?"  
  
"My dear boy, I don't know."  
  
"If you don't know, you could find out."  
  
"I can ask, but Draco, it's a huge risk, and not only to yourself. I very much doubt. . ."  
  
Draco stood. "Would you at least ask? Please." Taking a breath he reached out and touched the old wizard's hand where it lay on the table, still crumbed with sugar and cool to the touch with skin that folded and slipped across the bony hand. "Please."  
  
The Headmaster pulled his hand away and stood, coming around the desk and putting a hand on Draco's arm as he led him to the door. "I will see what I can discover. I can't promise anything more, Draco. Do you understand?"  
  
"I do."  
  
* * *  
  
From his position at the foot of the stairs, Draco waited in the invisibility cloak Severus had given to him for this purpose. He didn't know where it had come from, but he had the distinct impression it might have been borrowed, with or without his consent, from Harry Potter. It smelled of Potter, or something like that. It was very Potter-y. Severus have him a stern look from across the corridor, or the body Severus was wearing did. It was tall, dark-skinned, and wore an earring. Draco actually found it kind of appealling. Severus scowled at him.  
  
When the decision had been handed down Lucius might have expected a short time in which to arrange what remained of his affairs. It was traditional, Draco had been told, in cases involving wizards of high social standing, and the protocols for moving the prisoner to Azkaban were very strictly defined and apparently proof against any interference. Severus and Draco hoped that by encouraging Dumbledore to rush the transfer perhaps a small hole might appear. They were still only hopeful, but Severus had one advantage to draw on.  
  
Footsteps could be heard at some distance, and at the juncture of the corridors where Draco was concealed, the two Aurors paused with Lucius between them.  
  
"What's that?" one of them said.  
  
"I don't sense anything," the other replied.  
  
"Definitely something," the shorter man said, crossing towards Draco just as Severus stepped out. "Kingsley?" he said, but happily, stepping forward, "what are you doing here?"  
  
As Severus stunned the guard Draco ran to his father, who had already taken a large stride in the direction of escape. The second Auror was just standing there, eyes to the floor. Draco threw off the hood.  
  
"Draco?" Lucius said, taking a step back and putting a hand on the wall as if he needed steadying. Severus came up behind Draco, passing the silent Auror with a significant look.  
  
"We're sending you away, Father," Draco said. "It's a safe house, no magic, well guarded, people Severus knows, but not Azkaban."  
  
Lucius looked up at the tall black man and, clearly recognising something as Snape, pulled his mouth into a sneer.  
  
"Ainsley here will be taking you, as he also has a need to escape." Ainsley conspicuously looked away.  
  
"Really?" Lucius said, with obvious contempt.  
  
"But you have to agree to Accipio, so he will be safe," Draco added.  
  
"I think not."  
  
"It's that or the Dementors, Father. You don't want that."  
  
"So I can elect to stay here while your victim recovers and report you all, then?" Ainsley began to pay definite attention at that, looking at Severus in panic.  
  
"No," Severus said, "You don't have that choice."  
  
Lucius drew himself up in angry grace against Severus's illusionary bulk just as Ainsley said, "We really have to go now."  
  
"It's in Spain, Lucius," Draco said, almost hysterically. "You love Spain," he added quietly, as they all looked at him.  
  
There was a short but incredibly strange silence, and Lucius said, "All right."  
  
With an audible sigh Ainsley drew his wand and Severus moved away, drawing Draco after him, but Lucius caught the boy's other arm. "Come with me then," he said.  
  
"No," Draco said, twisting his arm free. "I won't. But I want you to be safe."  
  
Lucius gave them a bitter smile. "Voldemort will kill you both," he said, as the wand fell.  
  
* * *  
  
Draco came out of the bathroom entirely naked and tossed himself back on the bed, amidst the books he'd left scattered there. Severus watched him from the chair near the empty fire. It was warm, but Draco's naked bottom and flailing legs, the pale slope of his back, fine angle of his shoulders, the curling damp hair - it was all rather more than a man could work through, especially when it was Attivus. Workmanlike, but hardly exciting.  
  
Severus approached the bed before he felt Draco's smile.  
  
"You could have just asked," Severus said.  
  
Draco rolled over and flared his legs out to even more indecently expose himself. His half-hard prick moved very slightly over the pale curls between his legs. Draco licked his lips and watched Severus look at him. He stroked a hand softly across the pages of one of the books near his hip.  
  
"You want me, then?"  
  
Severus ran a hand up Draco's leg and sat on the bed. "Evidently." Draco smiled. "Unsurprisingly."  
  
"Can we try again, then?" Draco said, sitting up to put his hand to the belt on Severus's trousers.  
  
"All right," Severus said, a little roughly, unbuttoning his shirt.  
  
Draco watched him with pleasure, with anticipation, and grew hard under Severus's hot eyes sweeping over him. He put a hand to his own cock and stroked it softly watching, thinking of Snape's fingers in him - oh, Snape's tongue in him, that time - Snape's strong hands on his stomach holding upright while he was fucked.  
  
There was nothing of Lucius in that. Draco's mind stuttered over one of the things that he desperately didn't want to think.  
  
Severus pulled him close and stroked his back, feeling surreally like he was watching someone else occupy and use his body. He wrapped a hand round Draco's prick and coaxed it back to hardness, bent to taste Draco's hardening nipple, to lick across his firm stomach.  
  
He smoothly stroked Draco, unexpectedly thrilled by real this felt, so far from the impossibility of the sex scenes they'd been able to enjoy in the other space, where Draco's thoughts didn't intervene. Despite the days passing, despite their comfort with these new arrangements, Severus couldn't help feeling that none of the incredibly passionate sex they shared, almost everyday, really happened, however intense it felt.  
  
Beginning to thrust into Severus's hand and grasp at his shoulder, the desperation for it not to matter this time, for the memories not to be in the way, echoed and amplified between them, and Severus faltered.  
  
"Don't stop," Draco said, but Severus already was. "Don't think I'm. . . don't think I'm his."  
  
"Merlin, that's not it," Severus said, but he found it difficult to find the words that would explain what it was. That he hated Draco's pain and, however much he was surprised by it himself, wouldn't and didn't want to play games with it or bring it into their bed. And even without the sex it was already theirs.  
  
He'd hesitated too long and Draco pulled himself from the bed. Severus couldn't bring himself to force him back and make him talk about it, and he let him go.  
  
He felt the pain, the fear Severus found him unclean, didn't really want him, the confusion over whether he was and would always be second to Lucius in Draco's heart. All familiar now, all aching through him as Draco locked himself in the bathroom and scolded himself into not crying. But sometimes it was difficult to be sure none of those thoughts were his own these days.  
  
Hours later, he knew, they would sleep and find themselves in the rich quiet of that other world, where he would unfold and rebuild Draco with his lips and his tongue, defying what remained of the line between them with the pleasure they couldn't have here.  
  
THE END 


End file.
